My version of carbonara!

My primary ingredients: garlic, tuna and basil.
This link for a copy of the recipe.

The best home-made and affordable Italian food!

Amici has got to be the place to be! I love their rosemary chicken even if I’ve only tried it once. For this visit, I was able to try their pizza and gelato and I only have praises for both. Amici is the right place to have a relaxed dinner. The place is nothing fancy based on its appearance. In fact, the setting looks like that of a canteen. Yet don’t be fooled on how it appears. They take their food quite seriously.

I learned from E and my friend Raech that it is called Amici now, with the omission of the ‘de don Bosco’ part as the resto have been sold to another owner. They said that it was sold to the previous owner of Red Ribbon, who then sold the bakeshop chain to the owners of Jollibee. I do not know if that rings any truth. I guess I have to ask next time I visit Amici. Some says that the food was tastier when the Bosconian fathers were handling it. Honestly, I have only eaten at Amici recently to be a judge on that.

For this visit, I opted for Cannelloni Agli Spinaci, which basically was pasta tubes filled with spinach and ricotta cheese. It was topped with tomato & béchamel sauce and parmesan cheese.


My verdict: this pasta dish was not as good as the penne arrabiata I previously tried. I could not taste the ricotta cheese and the dish itself was a bit dry. It was good but not that spectacular.

They have 14 varieties of pasta dishes, with prices ranging from p160 - p195. Good for 2 people per serving.

Tutta carne (italian sausage and cooked & spicy ham)

Oh, the pizza, I absolutely loved! It was really different from the usual commercial pizza. It had that freshly-baked taste and the cheese was utterly yummy.
As with the pasta, they have 14 varieties of pizza, with prices ranging from P260 - P310.
Good for 4 persons each.

And for the first time, I tried their dessert. Raech and I had a fun time reading the Italian names of the gelato. We ordered strawberry supreme (which had real strawberry bits), espresso (this one is my favorite) and straciatella (which actually is just choco chips). It is quite difficult to describe the taste of gelato. It is very different from the commercial ice cream we usually eat. I guess it’s best to just try this/ P45 per cup.


The only difficult part with the visit was we found it tricky to find a parking space. Amici tried to solve that problem by posting flyers at the dining table of areas where one can park. But still, the area is limited so I guess it is better to go there earlier and beat the big crowds during lunch and supper times.


Of course, I am coming back again. Hopefully, in my next visit, I am with a bigger group of people. Perhaps by that, I can try my rosemary chicken and not be kuripot over spending for it alone. Hahaha!

Pan de Sal

. . . has got to be one of the meriendas Filipinos love and is not amiss at every table on breakfast. Pan de sal is sold from the lowest price of a peso to the 20-peso up range depending on its size. If one buys pan de sal at a nearby bakery at home, most likely it will be given in a brown paper package. At Pangasinan, where my mom is from, I remember that pan de sal is sold through vendors riding on a bike and honking in the morning to remind the people in the village that it’s time to wake and have your daily does of pan de sal. For those coffee lovers like me, I love eating my pan de sal by dunking it in my morning coffee. I don’t soak it that long though in the coffee as it tends to become mushy. I soak it just right for it to absorb the liquid and have a coffee-taste. Oh, what a good way to start each day.

And also, it’s a great way to be treated to a free merienda. From where I work, it has become a tradition for our country manager to treat us to pan de sal once every proxy season (summer months for us aka the busiest days at work). I work at a research company where summer months can be pretty chaotic. Those are our busiest months as our clients, the institutional shareholders of about every publicly listed company worldwide, need our research in time for their company’s annual meetings. You can just imagine the amount of time we spend reading annual reports and writing our evaluations and so we become really hungry. Last Friday was pan de sal day at the office and everyone was really excited. Our floor got a big box of the yummy delight. Yay!

And what goes with pan de sal?

Palaman!!!

for the peanut lovers . . .

for those who love strawberry . . .

this is everyone's favorite at the office - the bestseller!

BUT this has got to be MY favorite!

Oh, the combination is just heaven! I really loved it!

So, why don't you grab your daily does of pan de sal now?

E cooked dinner!!!

After several claims of wanting to do it . . . and procrastinating . . and planning . . . E finally did it. He cooked not just one, not just two but three dishes last Saturday. And take note! It was his first time to cook something which was not fried or did not come straight from the can. We actually planned last Saturday to be a cooking day but we only intended to cook one dish. Sudden turn of events made E cook three dishes as out of the blue we had visitors at home . And those visitors were the trabahador types who were really hungry. I think we fed about ten to fifteen people. What a feat!

T: (L) adobong atay at balun-balunan (chicken liver and gizzard)
(R)sinigang na baboy
B: ginisang ampalaya

Perhaps, I can start my own cooking school now. LOL.

Brothers & Sisters

. . . is my latest addiction!!!


E bought me the dvds for Season 1 and 2 last Friday. I finished the entire Season 1 (with 23 episodes) on Sunday night and had just started on two episodes on Season 2. I really love the show and I haven't felt this way about a TV show since the first season of Grey's Anatomy.

For the summary, you can read on this link.